Hedy Lamarr: 'Invention' and inventor on Turner Classic Movies (photo: Hedy Lamarr publicity shot ca. early '40s) Two Hedy Lamarr movies released during her heyday in the early '40s — Victor Fleming's Tortilla Flat (1942), co-starring Spencer Tracy and John Garfield, and King Vidor's H.M. Pulham, Esq. (1941), co-starring Robert Young and Ruth Hussey — will be broadcast on Turner Classic Movies on Wednesday, November 12, 2014, at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. Pt, respectively. Best known as a glamorous Hollywood star (Ziegfeld Girl, White Cargo, Samson and Delilah), the Viennese-born Lamarr (née Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler), who would have turned 100 on November 9, was also an inventor: she co-developed and patented with composer George Antheil the concept of frequency hopping, currently known as spread-spectrum communications (or "spread-spectrum broadcasting"), which ultimately led to the evolution of wireless technology. (More on the George Antheil and Hedy Lamarr invention further below.) Somewhat ironically,...
- 11/2/2014
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Ramon Novarro: Silent movie star proves he can talk and sing (See previous post: "Ramon Novarro: Mexican-Born Actor Was First Latin American Hollywood Superstar.") On Ramon Novarro Day, Turner Classic Movies’ first Novarro movie is Rex Ingram’s The Prisoner of Zenda (1922), a stately version of Edward Rose’s play, itself based on Anthony Hope’s 1897 novel: in the Central European kingdom of Ruritania, a traveling Englishman takes the place of the kidnapped local king-to-be-crowned. A pre-Judge Hardy Lewis Stone has the double role, while Novarro plays the scheming Rupert of Hentzau. (Photo: Ramon Novarro ca. 1922.) Despite his stage training, Stone is as interesting to watch as a beach pebble; Novarro, for his part, has a good time hamming it up in his first major break — courtesy of director Rex Ingram, then looking for a replacement for Rudolph Valentino, with whom he’d had a serious falling out...
- 8/8/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Ramon Novarro, Barbara La Marr, Trifling Women Ramon Novarro Brutal Death Pt.2: Convicted Killer Blames Catholicism Ramon Novarro's extant films for Rex Ingram, The Prisoner of Zenda (1922), in which he plays the sly villain Rupert of Hentzau, and Scaramouche (1923), in the heroic title role, are also well worth a look. I haven't watched The Arab (1924), which has been recently brought back to the United States from foreign archives. My understanding is that the print is incomplete; even so, here's hoping The Arab will soon be restored and shown on TCM. The now lost Ingram-Novarro collaboration Trifling Women (1922) would probably have been a sumptuous treat — cinematographer John F. Seitz's work in that Gothic melodrama seems to have inspired his later chiaroscuro lighting for Billy Wilder's Sunset Blvd. The same goes for the idyllic Where the Pavement Ends (1923), a tale of interethnic romance set on a South Pacific...
- 10/31/2011
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Rex Ingram (top); Barbara La Marr, Ramon Novarro, in Ingram's Trifling Women (bottom) St. Patrick's Day always reminds me of silent-era filmmaker Rex Ingram, among whose silent-era efforts are The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Prisoner of Zenda, Scaramouche, Mare Nostrum, The Magician, and The Garden of Allah, and whose birth — as Reginald Ingram Montgomery Hitchcock — took place in Dublin on Jan. 15, 1893. (Some sources have 1892, but in Rex Ingram: Master of the Silent Cinema author Liam O'Leary, citing a birth notice in The Irish Times, states that 1893 is the correct date.) Though largely forgotten today, Ingram's work — clearly shaped by his background in painting and sculpture — was so influential that it inspired Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu to pursue a film career. British filmmaker Michael Powell, who initially worked as Ingram's assistant, referred to him as "the greatest stylist of his time," while .David [...]...
- 3/19/2011
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
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